Welcome to the Runers Connect audio blog on the Run to the Top podcast. This coach Claire Bartholic and today I am reading

Is your concept of base training wrong? Why the base training phase is more than

just lots of easy running, written by Jeff Gaudette.

If you've been running for a few years, you've probably encountered the term base training

before.

Perhaps you read about it in a magazine or someone in your running group

mentioned it as the reason for their poor performance.

Oh, I'm just in my base phase, so I don't have any speed.

While most runners think they comprehend the concept of base training,

few actually understand how to implement it correctly,

thanks to some longstanding misconceptions about how a

week of training is structured during the base phase. Moreover, a new

appreciation for how the body adapts and responds to training has emerged in the last decade that has reinforced some of the original, yet misunderstood principles of how to approach the traditional base

training phase. In this article we will take a look back at the history of

base training as it was originally intended and compare it how it's commonly viewed today.

More importantly, we'll look at some of the common misconceptions of base training, how they came about, and then provide a more modern approach to

maximizing aerobic development in the base phase.

Background on Base Training.

The concept of base training was popularized by the legendary coach Arthur Littiard.

At the 1960 and 1964 Olympic Games, Littiard coached athletes, Murray Hallberg, Peter Snell, and Barry

McGee, and they dominated the distance events, winning six distance medals between them. Their training was revolutionary at the time

and sparked a transformation in how coaches understood training. Specifically, Lydiard had his athletes, even middle distance runners like Snell, running

...